In attendance: Thomas Morrill, Mindy Crandall, Araby Belcher, Lizz Hardardt, Shannon Andrews, Sneha Gantla, Béatrice Moissinac; guest member Eric Coker; Ashley Bromley, Angela McClendon
Meeting called to order at 2:33 PM
Email Decisions – (1) Approved Ashley’s request for Professional Development funds to go to AGEL. (2) Invited Steve Clark (OSU VP of Univ Relations & Marketing) to the March 18 EC meeting; declined a pre-meeting. (3) Approved the all-member email.
Minutes from 2-25-2014 Meetings – Approved with a small clarification from Shannon about the Ed Ray meeting
Global Health Gender Equity Resource Fair (with Eric) – The international health club is having an awareness week, and this year’s topic is gender equity and how it relates to global health. There is a presentation, discussion forum, and tabling on the afternoon of April 7. Eric was asked to see if CGE was interested in having a table at the forum, since in many places unions are key proponents of gender equity in the workplace. We’re definitely interested. We’ll put together an info sheet for it the week after break.
USAS Meeting – There was an understanding last year between OSU and United Students Against Sweatshops that OSU would commit money to collegiate clothing from a fair-trade provider. This has not yet happened. Eric has been told that OSU is only able to place orders during an annual clothing trade show (he thinks it happens in a few weeks). USAS is meeting tomorrow at 4 PM with Steve Clark and they requested someone from CGE be there. It appears that no one from the EC is available, but Ashley and Eric can be there.
Higher Ed/AGEL Conference – We have two members who submitted letters to go (Alisha Jones and Kalbi Zongo). The EC approves of sending both of them. Ashley will arrange with AFT for them.
Bargaining Team Authority – The EC is all in favor of empowering the B-Team with the authority to make decisions about bargaining.
ASOSU Restructure – We got an email from Thomas Bancroft, ASOSU Speaker of the House, about a proposed restructure of representation on the House. Instead of representatives being untied from any constituency, there would be seats “endorsed” by various groups and constituencies, such as the ethnic cultural centers, various fraternity organizations, and the women’s center. Two things: (1) We’d like to see a seat just for CGE in addition to a general grad student seat. (2) The ASOSU constitution requires that it can only be amended by a 2/3 vote of at least 15% student turnout. Their election turnout is usually around 5-7%. They’d need a lot of buy-in and promotional support to accomplish this. Lizz will look over the proposal and email a response.
AFT-OR Field Rep – We need to decide whether to request having a different field rep. Mindy will call David Rives for an initial conversation.
AFT National Convention – This is happening in July in Los Angeles. We are not going to try to send delegates this year.
Spring Term Meetings – Everyone pleeease email Ashley your schedules!
Social Hour – Next one is tomorrow: 5 PM at Bombs! Araby is working on publicity. We like the way these “5 at 5” social hours have been going and will stick with this schedule for spring term.
Newsletter – Araby has circulated a draft. We’re going to move the ExplOregon wine tasting (originally scheduled for March 15) to a later date (April?) when the weather should be more suitable.
Budget Revisited – We reconvened the budget committee last night, looking at YTD and dues committee “business as usual” estimates to update projections for revenue and expenses. We’d like to note specifically that the Steward Council Meetings line was reduced because we’ve been spending a lot less on it now that we’re using the (free) space in Westmin instead of renting the Senior Center. The EC approves this budget as presented. The EC plans to have a “brain dump” meeting before the FY14-15 budget committee gets to work (probably June).
Rideshare & Housing Boards – We’ve discovered that the need to moderate comments on these pages is rather inconvenient. However, it’s what we have for now. (We’ll think later about possible alternatives.)
Meeting adjourned at 4:08 PM